Fine Dining

You are not here to make the world comfortable.  When Christ comes dripping out of you at first, then a sprinkle and eventually a great torrent, it will not land you in the preferred spots at the table.  Even our Lord was pushed aside in the Samaritan village, mocked in Jerusalem and nearly knocked off the cliff in His home town.  You cannot expect to be beloved everywhere you go if God is seeping out of you!  His love, His patience, His calm assurance, His holiness and humility do not win over Pharisees or judges but the aroma of Christ will entice some to want a taste of what you have.    The "least of these" are frantically scanning about for a sign that the universe is more than just a wasteland...that there is real life somewhere.  You come to them with the Breath, the Light and suddenly darkness is not oppressive, the empty spaces are not a vacuum.  There is real hope and you possess it; a reason to believe and you hold it in your hand.  Do not neglect the life of God within you.  Do not starve it by letting the world be your nourishment.  You are God's gift to the world, His fine banquet.  Be filled with the Holy Spirit, eating with ravenous hunger the Scriptures, drinking deeply of Christ in prayer.  Never let a day pass when you do not put into practice something you see God is working into you.  Whether it be forgiveness, mercy, calm assurance, wisdom, pure actions, guarded words or generosity, let the Spirit bring it out of you.  At times God may have to squeeze it out of you like juice from the grape but when He does, you can be certain it is not in vain.  The pressure that breaks the bread and crushes the grape produces a rich meal for a "God-starved" world.  If you are squeezed, don't panic or fight to get out of God's grip, let Him produce in you a feast that is irresistible when the right guest sits at the table.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,         Isaiah 25:6a NIV

Something More

It is presumption to make it out that we can convince anyone of the reasonableness of Christianity .  We can point out that Christianity is reasonable to the believer but that is as far as we can go.  The facts are the facts.  The universe is before us to explore and examine and any atheist or pagan is just as free to look at it closely as the most holy of Christians.  Our task is not to talk people into following Christ.  Jesus never went out of His way to convince anyone of anything.  He showed the disciples his hands and side, gave the congregation on the hillside food to eat but he didn't talk a single unbeliever into going after Him.  Herod and Pilate were classic examples of the bait Satan puts out there.  Neither of the splendid trophies of "churchianity" were offered a solitary nibble of rational evidence.  Christ left both crawling in the dust of their unbelief because each remained in rebellion against the clear facts of his sinfulness.  We must do two things if we want to be evangelists.  We must present the Gospel clearly and simply and we must let Christ rule over us as we walk about.  We are not to "do something" to get the world to believe; we are to be witnesses.  Yet our overriding call as a witness is not to be witnesses of the rationale behind our faith, we are to be witnesses of the faith itself.  You sow the seed of the Gospel at a point where humanity is alerted and it may very well lie there dormant for an unbearable length of time.  At once however, in a blink, that seed may come alive and sprout but we cannot initiate the work of it.  God Himself does it.  He brings a crisis, a despair, a spotlight upon the ugliness of sins and when He does, like lightning, the Gospel will awaken where it was buried and that one soul will choose to give the Cross a go in him and come alive or walk away from it and wither.  What makes baptism such an amazing event is that we witness the power of the Cross worked out in the physicality of faith.  Nothing should so vivify our joy as the sight of one soul socked up in sin released from her bonds and free to be completely given over to Christ.  Let the Lord live through you and when He gives you the word, say the Gospel clearly and without reticence.  God did not fill you up with the fullness of Christ so that you might be a useless bump on a log.  He has given you the opportunity to be a fisher of men.  Get after it!

"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."   Matthew  4:19-20 NIV